Most humans have an innate fear of spiders, but even the most hopeless arachnophobes could find consolation in the hope of outrunning their eight-legged tormentors. But what if you couldn’t outrun them, no matter how fast you tried to run? Now THAT is the stuff of nightmares!
For a long time, the Moroccan flic-flac spider was considered the world’s fastest arachnid, but many scientists didn’t agree with that assessment, because that species uses an unusual form of locomotion that sees it performing acrobatic movements to double its usual movement speed. To see which species of spider is the fastest, a team of researchers tested 258 of them in laboratory conditions and came up with a clear answer.
The huntsman spider, a species native to Queensland, Australia, was declared the world’s fastest spider after reaching speeds of almost 3.6 meters per second, or a little over 8 miles per hour. That’s considerably faster than the average human speed of 4-6 miles per hour.
The study found that large spiders seemed to run faster as long as they were not so large that their heavy abdomen burdened them, and that fast running was associated with long legs.
